This paper critically examines Deleuze’s treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major figures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is destined to failure (...) because of the affinity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute affirmation of life, Spinoza’s principle that “all determination is negation,” as well as Hegel’s dialectical conception of negation, suggest that affirmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his “logic of difference” allows for an affirmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuze’s interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return as “selective being.” Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsche’s own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuze’s position on nihilism. (shrink)

Deleuze's ethics constitutes the core of his philosophy, which proposes a post-humanistic but robust nomadic vision of the subject that respects the complexity of our times while avoiding the pitfalls of postmodern and other forms of relativism. Deleuze's neo-Spinozist ethics rests on an active relational ontology that looks for the ways in which otherness prompts, mobilises and allows for flows of affirmation of values and forces which are not yet sustained by the current conditions. Insofar as the conditions need to (...) be brought about or actualised by collective efforts to induce qualitative transformations in our interactions, it requires the praxis of affirmative ethics. The process of becoming-minor, which necessarily involves becoming-woman, is central to this pragmatic ethical project that includes human as well as non-human actors. This paper addresses this ethics in terms of ontological relationality, affectivity and endurance. (shrink)

This article deals with sexual difference as a philosophy of subjectivity which, however inspired by poststructuralism, was further developed by feminists. The main features of this philosophy are outlined both in terms of its style and of its vision of woman as subject. The notion of 'difference' is analyzed in details, as the central concept that sustains the feminist nomadic philosophy of a subject that is both complex and situated, politically empowered and epistemologically legitimate.

The paper identifies three recent lines of interpretation of the politics that can be derived from Deleuze and Guattari, all of which share a way of reading the dualisms in their work that can be traced back to how they understand the actual/virtual partition, and to an alleged pre-eminence of the virtual over the actual. It is argued that this reading is not only inaccurate, but obscures the political dimension of Deleuze and Guattari's work. Clarifying the latter requires a reinterpretation (...) of the dualisms involved (as dyads rather than binaries), of the relation between virtual and actual (as a formal distinction where one acts back upon the other), and the drawing of a clear distinction between what Deleuze calls a ‘transcendent exercise’ of thought and sensibility and the properly metaphysical exercise that sets up the distinction between virtual and actual. What then appears is an image of Deleuze's and Guattari's thought that is far more concerned with practical questions and with a situated political practice of intervention. (shrink)

Although Deleuze’s work on Spinoza is widely known, it remains poorly understood. In particular, Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza’s immanentism has not been treated sufficient care; that is, with an eye to the context of its elaboration and the way in which it gradually takes on different characteristics. With this paper, I offer a synoptic analysis of Deleuze’s views on immanence in Spinoza and examine how these change over the course of Deleuze’s career. There are three ascending stages here: a first (...) one, where Deleuze’s attention is drawn to more recognizable issues in understanding Spinoza’s views on the deep metaphysical structure of reality; a second, more experimental one, where Deleuze questions what it means to be a reader of Spinoza in light of Spinoza’s theory of the body and affects; and a third, particularly iconoclastic stage, where Deleuze develops the theory of “the plane of immanence” as a way of articulating a meta-philosophical story about the place of non-philosophy at the heart of all philosophy. I trace each of these accounts, tie them together to tell a coherent and comprehensive narrative, and show what may be learned from this Spinoza that Deleuze portrays as drunk on immanence. (shrink)

This essay focuses on and attempts to uncover the truly radical character of Nietzsche’s early “philological” work, specifically asking after the benefit he claims the study of classical culture should have for our present, late-modern historical moment. Taking up his study of the Pre-Platonic thinkers in 1873’s Philosophie im tragischen Zeitalter der Griechen , the first section analyzes Nietzsche’s statement that history’s principle task is the uncovering of Persönlichkeiten . I argue that it is not at all the subjective character (...) of a psychologized individual that Nietzsche has in mind, but rather the moment of persönliche Stimmung or ‘being attuned’ to the world, which grounds and gives rise to thinking. In the second section, I show that the phusis or ‘nature’ to which the thinker is exposed in this attunement is comparable to the tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian natural forces in tragic poetry, as Nietzsche understands it. This dynamic conception of phusis does not provide a metaphysical substrate or an objectively real ground to which we might return via that Greeks, but is rather essentially phenomenal , i.e. it is nothing other than the movement into and out of appearance, which always entails and requires its reception by the human being to whom it appears. In the final section of the essay, this origin proves for Nietzsche not to be located in a distant past moment. Rather, it is the abyssal origin of the tradition that is always already effective in our present moment, informing our contemporary conceptions of our world and ourselves. (shrink)

This article brings forth a new perspective concerning the relation between stupidity and thinking by proposing to conceptualise the state of non-thinking in two different ways, situated at the opposite ends of the spectrum of thinking. Two conceptualisations of stupidity are discussed, one critical which follows a French line of continental thinkers, and the other one which will be called educational or ascetic, following the work of Agamben. The critical approach is conceptualised in terms of seriality of thinking, or thinking (...) captured by an apparatus, whereas the ascetic-educational approach is discussed by tracing the links between studying and stupidity. Both accounts assume that stupidity as non-thinking is a condition for thinking, either placed before thinking emerges or as an after-thought. However, the political implications concerning the role of philosophy in the public realm are divergent: for the critical approach, the task of the philosopher is to criticise the world, whereas for the ascetic approach, the task is to work on one’s own self and hope that the world will be changed through thinking. The wider aim of this article is to contribute to the debate concerning the public role of the intellectual starting from the assumption that there is a duty to think publicly and then clarifying what this duty entails in relation to the self and the others. (shrink)

El proyecto transhumanista de mejoramiento humano viene proponiendo ya desde hace tiempo una superación de los límites humanos que nos permita convertirnos en una nueva especie. A pesar de que dicha posibilidad es todavía lejana en la práctica, las hipótesis han invadido la ciencia ficción y están generando la imagen colectiva de lo que se considera posible o, incluso, deseable. Al mismo tiempo en la ciencia ficción esos desarrollos artificiales se llevan hasta sus últimos límites y se ponen en cuestión. (...) En el presente estudio se revisan las tensiones en relación con el posthumanismo que aparecen en la serie de ficción Westworld. En concreto, el artículo estudia cómo se desarrolla en ella el concepto de identidad, uno de los que más están cambiando en nuestra época. El análisis revela la necesidad de abordarlo desde un punto de vista complejo, en el que se dé una importancia especial a la vivencia personal, tanto desde el punto de vista corporal como psicológico para el despertar de la conciencia. A su vez, dichos elementos se mostrarán esenciales para comprender la propuesta de identidad narrativa que subyace en la serie. Por todo ello, los planteamientos de Westworld suponen una interesante reflexión sobre cómo se concibe la identidad hoy en día. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify the program of Deleuze’s work on Hume’s philosophy. Also, I plan to make clear the operational meaning of Deleuze’s own hallmark regarding his approaches to philosophy. I start to follow Deleuze’s plot by engendering three functions of his interpretation of Hume’s Treatise that will be the area of three thematic chapters. The first tries to sort the polemical function of empiricism that is launched through Deleuze’s Hume; the second attempts to figure the domain of subjectivity (...) as the inventive function of the book; the third searches the creative function by describing the role of the institutional theory. (shrink)

This article is based on the presupposition that postmodern philosophy has been largely influenced by Nietzsche's writings. The author raises the question of how Nietzsche and postmodern philosophy are interpreted in the contemporary philosophical discourse in Lithuania. The conclusion drawn is that many philosophy critics in Lithuania are interested in Nietzsche's philosophy (Mickevižius, Sodeika, Šerpytytè, Sverdiolas, Baranova) and in the problems of postmodern philosophy (Keršytè, Rubavižius, Žukauskaité, Serpytytè, Šverdiolas, Baranova, Norkus). The article also raises a second crucial question: beyond the (...) critics, are there any truly authentic postmodern thinkers in Lithuania? This article's main hypotheses is that Arvydas Šliogeris' philosophy is the best and perhaps the only example of original Lithuanian postmodern thought; it is based on, and interconnected with, the deeply inherited roots of existential thought in Lithuanian philosophical culture. The arguments for these hypotheses are as follows: first, Šliogeris is the first philosopher in Lithuania who has tried to reason in an interdisciplinary manner, e. g. trying to overcome the modernistic distinction between philosophy and the arts (especially literature, poetry, and the visual arts); secondly, Šliogeris's philosophizing is indispensable to his writings— his texts are examples of an experience of writing as thinking and thinking as writing; thirdly, following Deleuze's presupposition that the philosopher is a creator, one can see this creative aspect in Šliogeris's approach. His texts show how it is possible to synthesize insights from philosophy and poetry. (shrink)

It has gone largely unnoticed that when Deleuze opposes the “private thinker” to the “public professor,” he is invoking the existential thought of Lev Shestov. The public professor defends established values and preaches submission to the demands of reason and the State; the private thinker opposes thought to reason, “idiocy” to common sense, a people to come to what exists. Private thinkers are solitary, singular and untimely, forced to think against consensus and “the crowd.” Deleuze takes from Shestov and Kierkegaard (...) the idea that genuine thinking manifests itself in a thinking which rebels against rational necessity, a theme central to Shestov’s leading French interpreter, Benjamin Fondane. Although Deleuze at first expresses doubts as to whether Shestov’s critique of reason can overcome the legislative reason of Kant, or whether it is entirely free of ressentiment, I argue that Shestov and Fondane’s anti-rationalism is more radical than Deleuze sometimes admits, and show how Deleuze’s attitude toward Shestov became more unreservedly positive over the years. On the other hand, against Shestov and Fondane, I agree with Deleuze that the private thinker is in solidarity with the “strange powers” which can remake the world, and thus with “the people to come.” Nonetheless, I argue that Deleuze’s philosophy cannot form the basis of a politics of egalitarian consensus, but that “the people to come” can only be a “broken chain” of untimely and singular exceptions. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the first among the three moments of Georges Bataille’s reception of Nietzsche’s thought. During the 1930s, in the context of the review Acéphale, the French writer takes position in the debate about the relationship between Nietzscheism and fascism. He lays claim on the heritage of the German thinker as the source of a “heterogeneous” politics. This group of articles provides the context in which Bataille can start to delineate an original meditation on the relationship between work and (...) society. In this sense, they will mark a turning point in the path toward the post-war developments on the writers’ engagement. A new thematization of the relationship between text and context will emerge from the confrontation with Nietzsche and from the articulation of the fundamental duality of the forms of politics. (shrink)

The main aim of this paper is to analyse the applications of Nietzschean genealogical method to the study of religions. We focus firstly on Nietzsche’s basic concepts: force, will to power, value, evaluation, and power and then go on to discuss some genealogical investigations of the religious phenomena. According to Nietzsche, the nihilist structure of European history is metaphysics itself, understood as Platonism, other-wise explained as a separation between “the real world” (of values and ideals) and the “apparent world” (of (...) sensitive things). With the help of genealogy, values and ideals are proven to be illusions or appearances; on the contrary, senses and instincts, feelings and affections are rehabilitated. In this way, Nietzsche discovers the finitude of man and reveals the original unity between body and value, between what is given to man and what he can do alone. (shrink)

This paper comments on ‘Critique and Negativity: Towards the Pluralisation of Critique in Educational Practice, Theory and Research’ by Dietrich Benner and Andrea English. Negativity is a disquieting ghost for teachers, educational researchers, administrators and other professionals of this field, including those involved in the design of policy. First, I make some remarks in response to the essay by Benner and English in order to draw attention to the importance of dealing with negativity. Second, I introduce a further problematisation of (...) negativity: I deal with the practical issues that emerge from the conceptual reactivation of negativity and the possible consequences that result from this in the context of teaching graduate seminars. I am especially concerned with the ways in which negativity is inscribed in the process of knowledge production (that is, research), and in the possible consequences of subscribing to one or the other concept of negativity (teleological negativity, parasitic negativity, and relational negativity as the sine qua non condition for any ontology). Lastly, I raise some points for discussion with regard to certain possible consequences of the use of one or another notion of negativity in teaching and research. (shrink)

This paper attempts to put some order among the different notions of pain that are to be found in the Nietzschean philosophical corpus. It tries to show that there is a mutation of the Nietzschean concept of pain, from the notion of pain as evaluation to that of pain as localization of a commotion. Therefore pain is not in itself the source of a reaction, but is actually a consequence of a commotion that a reaction has already addressed by the (...) time of the appearance of pain. A deeper notion of pain is therefore sketched here, one that depicts it as an illusory reaction, destined at separating the global commotion of the organism from its alleged localized cause, thus separating the action from the agent and postponing the facing of the global effect of the commotion. It is for this reason that pain becomes a kind of “matrix” for the understanding of our interior life for Nietzsche, as well as a philosophical indicator of his theoretical adversaries. Finally, the end of this article attempts to show that certain positive indications for a different status of pain might serve as guiding lines for the uncovering of a Nietzschean theory of action. (shrink)

re s u m o O pre s e nte artigo se inic ia com uma cláusula interna à filosof ia de l e u z e a na, a de que todo pens a me nto pode ser carc t e r i z a do pelo grau de ima n ê nc ia que o me s mo realiza. O pens a me nto de Hu me, como “e m p i r i s mo superior”, segundo ex (...) p ressão de Deleuze, pro mo v e r ia a ima n ê nc ia, ou seja, ele não se re nde r ia a ne n hum tra ns c e nde nt e. Ao me s mo tempo, como s u p e r i o r, se trata de um empirismo que não se pre nde ao ime d ia - t a me nte da do, como suporia um “e m p i r i s mo ing ê nuo”. Por isso, o empirismo seria um p e ns a me nto da ima n ê nc ia que apre s e nta certa alçada tra ns c e ndental, permitindo a Deleuze falar em “e m p i r i s mo tra ns c e nde nt a l ”. A complexa fórmula filosófica re s u m ida nessa ex p ressão de l e u z e a na será por nós, aqui, tratada sob o ponto de vista Hume, de mo do que o ceticismo humeano será tomado como um operador de imanência que of e - rece ao empirismo sua dimensão transcendental. Tal tra t a mento será levado a cabo em duas etapas, quais sejam: a) ceticismo e pro b l e ma da disjunção inclusiva na int e ra ç ã o das fa c u l da des ; b) ceticismo e tra ns c e ndent a l ida de dos juízos empíric o s. palavras-chave Ceticismo; Empirismo; Hume; Deleuze; Transcendental; Imanência. (shrink)

In 1886, Nietzsche wrote: ‘I am still waiting for a philosophical doctor in the extraordinary sense of the term’: a doctor who pursues not truth, but an exceptional kind of health. Nietzsche's will to health, his theory of drive organisation, and his insistence that the philosopher put himself at risk, all work together in his overall project, which consists of taking up the very role of the highly revalued physician for whom he is waiting. Deleuze and Guattari engage this same (...) task of a revalued doctoring in the Capitalisme et Schizophrénie books, attacking the disease of oedipality and providing instructions for the deorganisation of the organism as self-cure. Offering tips on this radical treatment, they employ the figure of the hypochondriac to show how it can fail. Both Nietzsche and Deleuze and Guattari perform a revaluation of health as a condition of chronic critique, a condition that wraps itself around illness to keep itself critical. (shrink)

Although most scholars trace the Liar Paradox to Plato’s contemporary, Eubulides, the paper argues that Plato builds something very like the Liar Paradox into the very structure of his dialogues with significant consequences for understanding his views. After a preliminary exposition of the liar paradox it is argued that Plato builds this paradox into the formulation of many of his central doctrines, including the “Divided Line” and the “Allegory of the Cave” and the “Ladder of Love”. Thus, Plato may have (...) been the first to formulate the view that Graham Priest calls dialetheism, roughly, the view that some contradictions are, in an illuminating way, inescapable and true. The paper argues that Plato builds this Liar paradox into the formulation of his signature views because he holds that the attempt by finite human beings to theorize about transcendent realities results in the simultaneous necessity, and impossibility, of transgressing the limits of language—leading to the paradoxes. Finally, it is argued that the existence of these paradoxes in these Platonic doctrines is the direct result of an intrinsic hermeneutical circle in Plato’s aforementioned signature views. (shrink)

Ce texte a été publié dans Carnets, n° 6, janvier 2016 – Exotopies de Barthes, p. 130-142. Résumé : L'idiorrythmie, terme que Barthes emprunte au vocabulaire religieux des monastères et qui répond à son « fantasme d'une solitude collective », d'un compromis entre retrait et engagement, est, selon nous, en germe depuis les premiers travaux et sous-tend toute son écriture. Car, parmi le foisonnement de métaphores littéraires ou philosophiques mobilisées pour mener à bien son combat d'écrivain contre le - Poétique (...) et Études littéraires – GALERIE – Nouvel article. (shrink)

Through a reading of Nietzsche's texts, primarily of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, this article develops a phenomenological description of the variety of intoxication exemplified in conditions of drunkenness, or in states of emotional excess. It treats Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a literary expression of such intoxication, arguing against attempts to find a coherent narrative structure and clear authorial voice behind this text's apparent disorder. Having isolated the intoxicated characteristics of Thus Spoke Zarathustra - its hyperbolic rhetoric and emotions, its lack of (...) balance, its injustice, its shifting and conflicting moods, and its self-contradictions - I then offer an interpretation of the work, and by extension of intoxication itself, in terms of Nietzsche's model of the self as a dynamic multiplicity of forces. At the same time, I argue for a multiple and dynamic conception of personality in general. (shrink)

Eternal return is the paradox that accounts for the interplay between difference and repetition, a dynamic at the heart of Deleuze's philosophy, and Blanchot's approach to this paradox, even and especially through what it elides, further illuminates it. Deleuze draws on Blanchot's characterisations of difference, forgetting, and the unlivable to depict the ‘sense’ produced via eternal return, which, for Blanchot, is where repetition implicates or ‘carries’ pure difference. However, for Deleuze, difference and the unlivable are also developed by the living (...) repetition or ‘contraction’ of habit, which results in his distinctive characterization of ‘force’, ‘levity’, and sense in eternal return. (shrink)

The present paper investigates Nietzsche’s theory of power. The first part analyses the concept of will to power, understood as a synthesis of the multiplicity of forces. The connection between the will to power and interpretation is dealt with at length in the second chapter of this text. Interpretation means domination, organization, the adjustment of something in view of its usefulness to a dominant will to power, but also the creation of values, their infiltration into things, and not least the (...) internalization of the belief that values are universal, because through them, domination becomes effective. The next chapters of the text focus on the main strategies of domination, i.e. the internalization of values and the language. Since values are not only the most important tools of domination, but also the main lies and illusions of man, the language provides shortcuts for giving commands and for understanding them. (shrink)

In current discussion among feminists in general and feminist theologians in particular the status of theory, especially concerning essentialism and foundationalism, is a critical question. This study examines the issues pertaining to this question through reference to Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson, Susan Thistlethwaite, Sheila Davaney, Rebecca Chopp, and Morny Joy.

The fundamental basis of the project concentrates upon an interactive manoeuvre involving Modern Continental Philosophy and the Postmodern Visual Arts. The primary components that structure the thesis conduct a Deleuzoguattarian "process” of action to produce a series of mechanisms designed to “open-up" a space in which to manifest a range of interpretations/translations that follow the developmentary trajectory of designated specific areas of art production. The primary aims concern the advance of the action to communicate an innovative/original set of expositions with (...) a view to both “animate" and enhance these designated perspectives. The structural framework of the project tracks through “passages'/lines of flight” that occur/result from the impact of the Deleuzoguattarian mechanisms upon chosen material - "Introduction" sets forth some guiding themes. “Tours of the Black Clock" elaborates the Nietzschean background that informs the philosophical basis of the complete project. “Electrolite”, “Where Angels Play", “Not to Touch the Earth” “Across” are sections designed to trace a number of alternative pathways through the major texts of the Deleuzoguattarian enterprise. “Becoming X" initiates a secondary movement of experimentation. “Animal Nitrate" effects “an encounter" with the work of painter Francis Bacon via the Deleuze text “Logique de la Sensation", “Time and Again" introduces and articulates a number of instances from Deleuzian film-theory “The Fountainhead” is the main section of the project which evolves a detailed process analysing the paintings of American painter David Salle “The Mirror of Enigmas" traces related Deleuzeoguattarian themes through the films of David Lynch, maintaining as a background an examination of Postmodern American culture/society. “Breaking into Heaven" returns to the more specific analysis of the late paintings of David Salle and uses the mechanics elaborated in Deleuze's book “Le Pli”. “Final Cut”/”Last Exit”/”Memorial Beach" is an attempt at a series of concluding remarks within the project divisions are resolved within a comprehensive Deleuzoguattarian structural system - evolving to be primarily defined in terms of two “active" processes/movements which engage theory and explanation, practice and application respectively, being therefore both a philosophical /academic debate while incorporating a high-level of “creative" experimentation. The first sections of the project detail an extensive series of explanatory “pathways/journeys” through the texts of Deleuze and Guattari with a view to indicating measures that can be deployed/utilized in a Deleuzoguattarian process of art/cultural analysis. Constructing the architectural pattern/”anatomy” of a series of interpretative surfaces to reflect the dimensions of the cultural material approached. The sections in the second part of the project enact a number of experimental designs, dispatching Deleuzoguattarian mechanisms in the body of the chosen cultural material. An interpretative surface is never under the influence of a single differentiated flow it constitutes the mutual boundary of numerous adjacent flows. The same interpretative surface is therefore available to be understood in as many different ways as there are adjacent flows along its fractural surface. This project is essentially a speculative enterprise, a philosophical experiment whose aim is to enhance, enlarge and intensify our “knowledge" of the area defined, through a synthesis, here labelled as a “Deleuzoguattarian process of Art analysis”. For Deleuze, thought creates what it thinks, as perception creates what it perceives. The philosophical concept does not refer to the lived, but consists through its own creation, in setting up an event that surveys the whole of the lived no less than every state of affairs Deleuzoguattarian philosophy does not establish a relationship “between” philosophy and other disciplines, other ways of making sure, but eliminates this relationship to the advantage of a type of “greater philosophy” Thought/Philosophy thinks the sufficient reason of the actual in this manner. For Nietzsche, whose enterprise constitutes the base/departure for the Deleuzoguattarian program, “the world" we know lies in our interpretation of it. However, the task of interpretation is not to discover “truth" but to “create" it. According to Nietzsche, there is no “world-in-itself, no unconditioned and stable entities that await our discovery, but a dynamic and turbulent “becoming" in which the forms we perceive are not separate from our interpretations of them Because we are ourselves part of this becoming, there is no vantage point from which it is possible to gain the absolute/unconditioned knowledge that we have imbued with the idea of “truth”. The exercise merely becomes self-reflective. However, despite this skepticism, Nietzsche realizes that the game of truth is unavoidable, so therefore he, and In consequence we, departing/initiating the pathways through this project, have to cast in the role of the philosopher who knows what he invents and invents while he knows. In Postmodern Art no style dominates. Alternatively we experience endless improvisations and variations on themes, parody/playfulness. Postmodern artists are unabashedly eclectic and call attention to it, combining traditions borrowing from rituals and myths. All the world's cultural symbols are now available in the public domain - “SANTA CLAUS IS ON THE CROSS". The Deleuzoguattarian process of art delineated is a play with the game of “truth” and not an explanation of a “whole" a description of the network of the "dynamic”/fluid nature of our transitional relationship to it. It is the flow of energy that encompasses what Deleuze/Nietzsche refer to as “the whole" A flow invokes the dynamic/fluid nature of becoming, while energy/activity implies a potentiality - the inherent capacity and growth actuated by the will to power. The flows of energy are manifested into differentiated flows within flows, “Ad infinitum” and powered by the parameters of state space - a potential i.e field defined by the characteristics of the subject flows associated Nothing exists in isolation Differentiation exists only via relations to other flows in a dynamic/non linear network of resistances. (shrink)